Silenced: Making Noise About Crimes Against Deaf Children

You won't find me defending any criminal justice system when someone says it's unfairly prejudiced or arguing with the agitator who claims that the rich will always get away with the most heinous crimes or debating about whether there's a crime worse than child molesting. Yet while director Hwang Dong-hyuk and novelist Cong Jee-young and I might agree on such matters, Silenced -- the movie Hwang's made on Cong's book -- still left me feeling icky, not validated in my worldview. I can't speak to Cong's novel (The Crucible) but Hwang's depicted cruelties and perversions last a little too long for my taste. When a young boy is beaten by a teacher, the slapping and kicking goes on for an inordinate time; later a scene of a faculty member caressing a young boy's bare bottom is shot in a graphic manner that literally makes you sick. Perhaps that's Hwang's intent, to show the heinousness of the crimes, to not let us shy away from just how ghastly the tortures inflicted on the young deaf students of a special ed school in Mujin truly are.

This isn't simply a work of the imagination either. Cong's serialized internet sensation The Crucible was based on true events: From 2000 to 2003, five teachers and the principal of Gwangju Inhwa School raped or otherwise sexually assaulted at least nine of their students, with nary one of the perpetrators receiving a heavy sentence. To the contrary, some of the teachers eventually returned to their jobs. To its credit, the film remedied that somewhat as the public outcry following its release resulted in a resurrection of the case and stiffer punishments for some of those involved. Helmed by Gong Yoo as the new teacher who discovers the crimes and Jeong Yu-mi as the human rights activist who joins his fight in court, Silenced is important for what it accomplished. I imagined it may have also ruined the life of Jang Gwang who is so creepy as a pair of twin pedophiles that I can imagine people spitting at him on the street, his portrayal of unrepentant perverts is so complete.

Oki's Movie: Hong Sang-soo's Echo Chamber

Oh, Hong Sang-soo. Here you go again, you myopic auteur, with your tried-and-true tropes: The philandering filmmaker who drinks too much, the winter-summer romance that doesn't add up, the backstabbing frenemy who for awhile takes the lead, the love triangle that breaks apart then forms anew with somewhat interchangeable people. And also once again, from me, a lot of eye-rolling that culminates with a double-take caused by a narrative twist or a genius piece of dialogue or a stretch of naturalistic acting that really is without peer in Korean cinema, all of which makes me second guess myself and you and what the whole point of movie-watching/making is.

In short Oki's Movie feels both like standard Hong fare and a fresh experiment. A collection of faux student shorts examining the ever-changing relationships of a college film professor (Mun Seong-kun), his protege (Lee Seon-gyun) and the young woman (Jeong Yu-mi) having affairs with them both, Oki's Movie initially feels like typically Hong Sang-soo in the worst way and ends up feeling like typical Hong Sang-soo in the best. The change of heart in the viewer comes late in the game, thanks to two scenes: One, in which the two students -- arriving late to class on a snow day -- are encouraged by the teacher to ask whatever they want which they do with hilarious results; the second, a longer sequence in which a walk in the woods, taken by the young woman first with the professor, then with the student, is compared via short back-to-back footage that, in a very telling way, illustrates what Hong is a master of -- showing the significance of the most seemingly insignificant moments and actions.

As much as I eventually came to appreciate, even like, Oki's Movie, I admit there's still a part of me that wishes that Hong came up with a different plot more often instead of treading familiar ground. But given how prolific he's been of late -- three movies in 2009, two in 2010, two in 2011, one in 2012, and three in 2013 -- I suppose it's inevitable that he repeat himself. To his credit, he does so inventively.

Innocent Steps: Cry, Cry, Cha-cha-cha

Though the movie's ostensibly about a couple of ballroom dancers, Innocent Steps has very few actual dance numbers. There's one in the beginning in which our hero Young-sae (Park Keon-hyeong), the country's greatest dance instructor, tries to be a competitor but ends up just getting hurt by jealous rivals. Then there's another flashy sequence near the end in which Young-sae's latest pupil and immigrant Chinese wife Chae-rin (Moon Geun-young) shakes her hips in the Nationals while partnering with his soulless enemy Hyun-soo (Yun Chang). Much of the time in between, however, this pic misses out on opportunities for tacky costumes and athletic moves and focuses instead on the two leads' budding love story. You see, Young-sae and Chae-rin are destined to be a real married couple (and not just an arranged one) since he's got so much to teach her about fusing the samba with ballet, and she's got so much to teach him about the magic of fireflies.

Writer-director (and sometime actor) Park Young-hoon's crafted a sappy story to be sure but I still welled up when the two estranged lovers went to the marriage bureau section of the immigration office and told stories of how much they loved each other, even if she'd basically caved under outside pressures to dance with the very evil blond rival who'd hired thugs to cripple her unlawfully wedded husband. The two sweeties eventually work things out in time for the credits which have probably the best dance sequence of all. (Does the fedora ever lose its charm? Apparently not!) I only wish Young-sae and Chae-rin had spent more time hanging out with goofy Chul-Yong (Kim Gi-su) and his giddy partner (Jeong Yu-mi) who got matching cornrows for the championship, even if no one ever took them serious as contenders.

As to the government inspectors investigating whether Young-sae and Chae-rin are really a couple or not, the less said the better.

In Another Country: Falling in Love With the Lifeguard All Over Again

Isabelle Huppert in a Korean movie? That's right. It's Hong Sang-soo's In Another Country, a melancholic diversion of three interconnected shorts featuring the transplanted French actress as a bewitching director, a philandering businesswoman and a jilted wife -- each with the same foreign accent. Before you get hung up on Huppert's undifferentiated vocal work, consider this: Hong hasn't cast Huppert to display a Meryl Streep-like range. He's cast her because he recognizes her as a kindred spirit. He knows she's capable of excelling at the in-the-moment acting that exemplifies his films at their best. Indeed, Huppert's proficiency at playing the moments between the moments is most apparent in the opening vignette during which she's largely listening to conversations in Korean she cannot understand in full but nevertheless intuits in good part. If the latter scenes don't allow her to silently upstage her cast mates two more times, they at least show she's in good company with co-stars like Yoon Yeo-jeong, Moon So-ri, and Jeong Yu-mi who match her meaningful glance for meaningful glance as a best friend, a jealous wife and a hotel worker respectively.

The men don't fare as well though. Kwon Hye-hyo may be fine as a hard-drinking man on the make but neither Kim Yong-ok nor Moon Sung-keun are even passably believable as a none-too-clever monk and a mildly amorous director. The nuances of Hong's deceptively simple dialogue escapes them both completely. The only male actor who actually holds his own with the actresses is, ironically enough, beefcake Yoo Joon-sang. Emerging from the waves like a God of Love for each of Huppert's ladies abroad, Yoo's performance as a dimwitted lifeguard isn't mining subtext so much as it's conveying good-natured incomprehension. Flirting in a language he hasn't mastered, he's a consistently humorous counterpart to Huppert's ennui in triplicate. Who wouldn't fall in love with him? And who wouldn't ditch him without remorse soon thereafter?

Blossom Again: He Broke Her Heart in Three Separate Pieces

I can buy the idea of Joh In-yeong (Kim Jeong-eun), a dissatisfied, confused 30-year-old woman falling in love with Lee-suk (Lee Tae-sung), her 17-year-old, possibly learning-disabled student who looks exactly like her first boyfriend who bizarrely happens to have had the same name. What I don't and won't buy is that there's also a teenaged girl named Joh In-yeong (Jeong Yu-mi) who is also in love with this Lee-suk lookalike who is also the identical twin of a guy named Lee-soo who just happens to be the first love of the younger In-yeong who now also is head over heels for the replacement. Lee-suk is king of the sloppy seconds! It isn't as confusing as it sounds. But it is as preposterous as it sounds. With all the repetitions of an Escher drawing but with none of the complexities, writer-director Jung Ji-woo's exasperating Blossom Again (a.k.a. Close to You a.k.a. Teacher's Pet a.k.a. Wisdom Tooth) is way too forcefully fanciful to be enjoyed as a tragic romance or a time-travel tragedy or a puzzle of perversion or a plain old piece of cinematic art.

When an original, now older Lee-suk (Kim Joon-seong) enters the picture, you're left with no option but to follow the lead of the old In-yeong's still-around boyfriend Jang-woo (Kim Yeong-jae) who can just grin and bear anything. Just how much Jang-woo is willing to smile through is kind of amazing. In-yeong says she still loves her very first boyfriend? Grin and bear it. In-yeong says she's got a crush on her underaged student? Grin and bear it. In-yeong comes home after screwing said student? Grin and bear it. In-yeong says she wants the apartment to herself so she can entertain said student alone Saturday night? Grin and bear it. Although in that last case, the grin is now kind of a grimace and Jang-woo sabotages In-yeong's twisted fantasy by bringing the old Lee-suk over for food and wine. Why Jang-woo loves In-yeong (and why either Lee-suk does too for that matter) is a contrivance that's even less believable than all the endless coincidences. Take another page from Jang-woo's book of behavior and permanently delete this movie from your brain. He used the index finger and thumb. I use the middle finger.

My Dear Desperado: The IT Girl Is the It Girl, Too

One great thing about seeing Korean films in the United States is that 99 percent of the time you're going in blind. You might have a two-sentence description of the movie's plot, but generally speaking there's no reviews in the local paper and no buzz at the water cooler to build expectations or undermine your experience with spoilers. Because of that, you sometimes stumble on a truly unexpected experience. You think you're cozying up in front of the TV for a random romantic comedy? Well, think again, my friend. Because My Dear Desperado is hardly cliched cuteness. A zeitgeist-y romcom about IT girl Sae-jin (Jeong Yu-mi) -- who can't get a job despite her smarts and skills -- and her neighbor Dong-chul (Park Joong-hoon) -- who's just got out of prison and is kind of trying to get out of the mob and kind of resigned to staying in it -- My Dear Desperado is a subversion of the traditional romance. Do the two main characters fall in love? Of course they do. But only to a certain degree.

Defying Hollywood conventions, My Dear Desperado's writer-director Kim Kwang-shik always keeps one foot firmly grounded in reality so while there are sparks between these lovebirds, there's never really fire. Kim is fully aware that even if these two are fond of each other that that doesn't mean they're meant for each other until the end of time. A one-night stand stays a one-night stand. A pretended engagement doesn't last the duration of their weekend visit to her father's place. And Dong-chul's devotion to Sae-jin may help help change her life but it doesn't work in reverse like a fairytale. Sae-jin neither attempts nor considers helping Dong-chul extricate himself from a gangster's life. Because of that the two are destined to drift apart. Just how far they do will likely come as a surprise to most viewers. It shocked the hell out of me!

I'm still undecided if My Dear Desperado is a great movie or simply a good movie with an ending that I simply didn't see coming. Until I figure this out, I'm going to recommend it to everyone willing to hear me sing its praises. There's one unexpectedly delicious scene in which Sae-jin's crying jag transforms into an erotic breathing lesson and another spot-on vignette in which Dong-chul's attempt to be a gentleman gives way to his ingrained thug. I believe, Kim knows exactly what he's doing here. But it's really just a guess on my part.

Visitors: When a Filmmaker Works in Charcoal, This Is What Happens

The three films in Visitors are best described as discarded sketches. By which I mean, they come across as both unfinished and unwanted. The first, Japanese director Naomi Kawase's "Koma" definitely feels as though she's testing out ideas for a bigger film, more than making an actual short movie. Characters are underdeveloped, and the story -- about a young man who comes to pay his respects to his grandfather's former employer only to find himself seduced by a crazy woman who may be misinterpreting him as her spirit bridegroom -- is skeletal and would require more fleshing out to be compelling. Watching "Koma," you definitely pick up on Kawase's background as a documentarian, what with its stories within stories, and its personalization of history, even its use of nature photography as segue. But what is she documenting exactly? An aborted creative process? Dunno.

Next up: Hong Sang-soo's "Lost in the Mountains." It's the most successful of the bunch but it's also the most disappointing because it seems to end halfway. Hong, on familiar ground to be sure, relates the woes of a young writer (Jeong Yu-mi) who keeps plotting her own disappointments: first by popping in on her best friend unexpectedly, then by calling up the married professor (Moon Seong-geun) with whom she had an affair, and then by sleeping with her humpy ex-boyfriend (Lee Seon-gyun) whose career has outstripped her own. A chance encounter involving all four has her tossing aside a coffee cup belligerently and driving away but you feel that the story is really only beginning. This is Act I. Where is Act II? Come to think of it, don't most movies have three acts? I think so!

The final entry is "Butterflies Have No Memories" by Lav Diaz. It's hard to believe that Diaz, like his counterparts here, couldn't find better actors ("stilted" would be kind) or a better cinematographer ("murky" would be generous) or a composer to add some drama where little is found but even if he had, no supporting talent could've rescued this script which is really a second draft. "Butterflies..." might be too short to qualify as a feature film but even so it takes a good third of the movie to even introduce the plot. Quasi-political, the central action concerns some poor guys who decide to don conquistador masks and kidnap their better-off Canadian cousin as a way to make money. This is an instance where you wish Diaz had been invited to a writer's lab at Sundance to refine his tale of the downtrodden losers out to make a quick dime. Was his international application rejected? Who knows?

I think what frustrates me most about Visitors, though, is that both Diaz and Kawase -- Kawase especially -- have chalked up some serious awards yet as an introduction to their work Visitors left me feeling that maybe the awards were misprized. If a short anthology is designed to give a quick taste of a few artists, then Visitors has left me looking for a meal elsewhere. May I see another menu?

Chawz: Like Jaws But Less Scary and More Hairy

The following statement was issued on behalf of some wild boars subsequent to the release of the B-horror movie Chawz:

"For Immediate Release: Alert! Writer-director Shin Jeong-won is demonizing us in his porcine version of Jaws. We are hereby compelled to proclaim that we are omnivorous beasts who feast on berries, grass, bugs and small lizards (but never to the point that we weigh 400 lbs.). Furthermore, human beings are not a part of our daily diet. In fact, should we attack people, we aim only to dismember or maim. We are peace-loving animals. If we should tusk your ass (as in Chawz), it's because you're irritating (as in Chawz). Like the title character, we are indeed seeing red!"

A second anonymous statement quickly followed purportedly from a member of the local police precinct, though this one too was unsigned:

"Dear Mr. Shin, Having just seen Chawz, we would like to remind you that we devote our lives to protecting the public and therefore deserve respect, not ridicule. Why do you make us out to be a bunch of Keystone Kops? It's one thing to satirize the law; it's another to show cops spilling down hills, shirking duties, and running away from adversity at every turn. Couldn't you make us fearless? If not, couldn't you make us funnier? What gives?"

While we are unable to trace either letter to its source for further comment, we did watch the creature feature in question to evaluate the expressed concerns. This is our assessment and reply:

"Boars: Fret not. The steroid monster in the pic causes more giggles than screams. You're safe from instantaneous extinction by frightened Koreans. Boys in blue: Relax. In Chawz, you're no dumber than the local farmers and only slightly less resourceful than the Jane Goodall wannabe (Jeong Yu-mi). As to fellow Netflix subscribers, Chawz is a novelty, a quirky little fright flick that teeters on being truly funny and never really tries to be really scary. You almost wish that the boar was twenty times bigger and the local cops ten times dumber. As it is, Chawz feels like it sort of wants to be real, despite the kooky characters. It's weird that way."